Al Johnson

Al Johnson's work as a soul singer, songwriter, producer, arranger, and keyboardist extended across six decades. His earliest activity occurred in the 1960s with a promo-only solo single issued on the South Camp label; at the same time, while enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., he assembled the musicians who would evolve into the Unifics. Guy Draper discovered the group and placed them with Kapp, where their initial pair of charting singles—"Court of Love," arranged by Donny Hathaway, and "The Beginning of My End"—reached Billboard's R&B chart in 1968 and climbed inside the Top Ten. Once the Unifics issued an album and disbanded, Johnson collaborated with Tata Vega, Special Delivery, Positive Change, and Deniece Williams, among additional artists. His most active stretch arrived at the close of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, when he delivered the solo LPs Peaceful (1978) and Back for More (1980), scored a Top 30 R&B hit with Jean Carn on the title track of the latter release, and supplied key parts to Norman Connors' Take It to the Limit, most notably a version of Lou Courtney's "I Don't Need Nobody Else." Into the later 1980s his contributions supported Carn and the Whispers as well as assorted Prelude label sessions. The Unifics regrouped in the 2000s to cut a second album. Johnson passed away without warning in 2013; the following year saw the release of Him or Me, a set of previously unheard recordings made with Derrick "Doc" Pearson.